Firmament: In His Image

by J. Grace Pennington

  “We’ll see.”

  When we were safely back in our tent again, we found the Captain waiting; tired, sandy, and looking discouraged.

  “No luck,” he said in answer to the Doctor’s query. “We just don’t know what’s going on. The hole is patched, but we don’t dare take her back up until we can be sure it won’t happen again.”

  The Doctor put an arm around me. “We’ve made a little discovery of our own,” he announced.

  “Oh?” The Captain feigned interest.

  I picked up the book, navigated to the definition of “basileus” which was “king,” and handed it to him wordlessly.

  “You found something in the book?” His tired face looked confused. “What did…” His voice faded, and the question went unfinished as he stared at the words.

  “What language is this?”

  “Greek,” I answered. “Ancient Greek.”

  “We looked up any other names that we could remember,” the Doctor added. “It all works.”

  The Captain shook his head. “This doesn’t prove anything for you, Gerry. These people speak Greek. What does this mean? Now I know you’re not going to accept my first thought.”

  “No sir.” The Doctor answered as definitely as if the Captain had said what he was thinking. “I do not and will not believe that this race ‘planted’ humanity on Earth.”

  “I suppose you want me to think that they came from Earth in the first place? Gerry, the culture here is old. Man didn’t achieve spaceflight until the last few centuries—long after ancient Greece had died. They’d have no way to get here.”

  “That works both ways, Captain. There is no technological advancement here. They’d have no way to get to Earth either.”

  “Stalemate, is it, Doctor?” A tired smile formed on the Captain’s dirty face, and I wondered again how the two men managed not to get angry with each other.

  “Certainly not. I have a question for you. On what do you base your idea that ancient man could not achieve space travel?”

  The Captain stared at him, and then shook his head. “Gerry, I never thought I’d see the day you’d abandon the last semblance of reason.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “Well how do you expect me to answer? I’m not even sure I understand the question. We all know that the first man in space was Yuri Gagarin in 19...”

  “Yes, and once we all knew that the Earth was flat, and then we all knew that there were blue unicorns on the moon, thanks to Richard Adams Locke. Until 2170, we all knew that that warp travel was impossible. There have been other mistakes and hoaxes in history, why won’t you believe that this could be one too?”

  There was a moment of silence, and I studied the Captain’s face. After struggling for words, he looked up with an unusually wry smile. “You’re going about this all wrong, Gerry. You know you can’t prove negative facts—the nonexistence of something. It’s not up to me to prove that these people didn’t come from Earth; it’s up to you to prove that they did. And I expect you’ll have a hard time with that.”

  “Oh, I never said they came from Earth,” the Doctor reminded, putting some salt into a bowl of water. “I just said it wasn’t impossible. It’s not up to me to prove it’s not impossible, it’s up to you to prove that it is. And I expect you’ll have a hard time with that.” A half-smile of triumph on his face, he handed the water to the Captain.

  Shaking his head, the Captain took it. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a stubborn man, Doctor Lloyd?”

  “Mm hm, you have. Several times.”

  The Captain drank the water, grimacing. “How did you know I didn’t take my salt?”

  “I know you, don’t I? Come on, drink up.”

  There were no more words spoken until the Captain had drained the bowl dry and handed it back to his doctor. “Alright then. You prove conclusively that they came from Earth, and I’ll never argue about aliens again.”

  “A dare, Captain?”

  “The truth. It’s too incredible to believe, and if you can make me believe it, you’ll be a magician.”

  “Not a magician. A doctor seeking the truth.”

  It had to be at least the hundredth time I’d heard them arguing the matter, but it took on a fresh perspective somehow, as I sat in the alien tent with a muddle of jumbled conversation all around us. I was surprised to realize that I had taken a side in the argument for the first time. I felt like I had a stake in the discussion, more than just secretly wishing my dad was not so argumentative. It meant something to me.

  And that was what Crash and August were both missing. Crash was simply unable to handle things he could not understand, but August was just beginning to spread his roots in the foundation of Christianity, and didn’t know which direction he should grow, or how far. They had different bases for the problem and different ways of expressing it, but at the heart it was the same. They didn’t know what they believed.

  The Doctor knew what he believed. The Captain knew what he believed. Whales, in his own way, knew what he believed--like a good scientist, whatever the facts told him. I knew what I believed. If only, I thought with an involuntary sigh, I could help them somehow.

  “Something wrong, Andi?” the Doctor asked, hearing the sigh.

  I shook my head and opened my mouth to say something, when Elasson hurried in, closing the tent flap behind him. “Dia ti elthete to prin pros eme?” he asked. I saw that there was still a dark red mark on his right cheek, and shuddered. Basilius had struck him harder than I’d thought.

  “The dictionary, Andi,” the Doctor ordered, his eyes, too, on the mark.

  I picked it up and typed in “How is your cheek feeling, Elasson?” then told it to translate. The translation appeared on the screen after a second, but without even looking at the strange Greek characters I pushed, “listen,” which would say the words aloud.

  A dull, automated voice spoke. “Ton de gnathon pos echeis, elasson?”

  With a cry, Elasson stumbled back in amazement, at the same time putting his fingers up to brush his cheek. He had understood, then.

  As fast as I could, I typed in, “We can communicate with this device.”

  When the words were spoken, he sat down slowly, his eyes as wide as before. “Apistos,” he breathed.

  I quickly set the dictionary to transcribe, and held it up to him, waiting for him to say something. There was total silence in the tent for a few minutes as he stared at it. The Captain and the Doctor watched, but didn’t speak.

  “Ara touto pyxis mageutike?” he asked at last, and the words were transcribed and translated. “Is it a magic box?”

  There was no doubt now—he was speaking ancient Greek, evolved only slightly. I typed out, “It’s not magic, it’s science,” and let the book say the words in Elasson’s language.

  Confusion spread over his face. The word for science must not mean much to him, but he nodded anyway. He said something in an awed tone, which the dictionary translated to mean, “It is amazing.”

  Thinking quickly, I typed out a question I had been dying to ask ever since the first time I’d met him. “Why does my name surprise you?”

  When he heard the question, he smiled, and then answered. “It sounds like the word ‘man,’” he answered slowly. “And you are not a man. It confused us.”

  The Doctor and the Captain gave a little chuckle from one end of the tent. “Ask him about this morning,” the Captain said quietly.

  We had to go back and forth many times before I got it out of him. Occasionally the dictionary didn’t recognize a word, and I’d have to go in and manually search for a close match to the word to get the correct translation. In general though, it worked amazingly well. We were speaking to each other, through the medium of an electronic dictionary.

  The Captain’s early surmise had been correct. Basilius was unhappy that we had interfered with the work of Nama’s family. He had wanted to kill the Doctor to set an example for the rest of us, but one of the
few laws of the people stated that no person could be executed without the approval of every surviving member of the ruling family. The only living members at this time were Basilius and Elasson, and Elasson refused to give his consent.

  “The king is only king as long as he stays within the law,” Elasson informed, looking up at us with a mixture of pain and determination in his eyes. “If he kills you without my consent, he cannot rule. It is the only power I have.”

  When this was translated to us, the Captain nodded soberly. “Thank him,” he instructed me, quietly, so as not to interfere with the transcriber.

  I had already begun, and when the device blandly pronounced the strange words that apparently meant “thank you,” I was unsatisfied.

  “Thank you, Elasson,” I said. “Thank you.” I let my gratitude show through my tone, hoping he’d understand just how much it meant to me. He nodded quietly.

  Next he wanted to know where we were from and how we had gotten here. I turned to consult the Captain, who agreed that he had showed his worthiness to be trusted with our information. It was a long and arduous process, trying to explain the concept of other planets and starships to him, but worth it when we saw the light of excited amazement in his eyes.

  I was trying to decide which of my questions I should ask next, when the tent flap opened. I started back, afraid for an instant that it might be Perekhon coming to see what was going on, but to my relief it was Mr. Whales.

  He held a small acrylic container in one hand and a tiny Geiger-Müller counter in the other. Looking more excited than I could ever remember seeing him, he hurried over to the Captain. “I think I might finally have it, Captain!”

  The dictionary started trying to translate his sentence, but I cancelled it. I hit transcribe again and looked expectantly at Elasson.

  “I’ll go get your dinner,” he said, standing up. “I don’t think my brother wants you coming to the dinner hall.” Then he left.

  “What’s going on here?” Whales asked, as he listened in amazement to the computerized translation.

  “Never mind that, tell us what you found,” the Captain ordered hurriedly.

  Whales sat down exhaustedly on the ground. “It’s their sun, Captain.”

  “I thought you said you examined the sun. So did the labs—”

  “I did, but I didn’t know what to look for, so I missed it.” He held the Geiger counter up to the fading light. “There are heavy deposits of natural chlorine in the ground here, which I had noticed right away but didn’t pay any attention to.”

  “What does chlorine have to do with our reactor?” asked the Captain impatiently.

  “I’m getting to that. If you’ll remember,” he glanced at me as he said this, “I commented before on the unusually high presence of argon in the atmosphere. It took me all afternoon to make the connection.”

  He said it as though there were an obvious connection between chlorine deposits and the presence of argon that we should all guess at.

  “And what is that connection?” the Captain asked. “Do go on, Whales, give us the facts.”

  “Neutrinos, sir. When electron neutrinos collide with the chlorine nuclei, they form argon.”

  “Hey,” the Doctor said, “speak English, please.”

  “I know what neutrinos are,” I spoke up, nodding. “A type of lepton subatomic elementary particle. There are so many of them created by our sun that billions of them pass through every square centimeter every second.”

  “About twenty-three billion,” Mr. Whales nodded, looking at me approvingly, but the Doctor frowned.

  “What am I, a quantum physicist? What do I care about subatomic particles?”

  “Gerry,” the Captain began irritably, when a yell from outside silenced him, and we all stopped to listen.

  We hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a deep sound, like rolling thunder, filling the air. But instead of stopping with a loud clap, like thunder did, it kept on, growing louder and louder, until we felt the ground vibrating with it. It grew dark, and there was a great commotion outside our tent, nearly swallowed up by the thundering.

  “What is it?” I cried, and the Captain had already scrambled to the tent flap to look out. I followed, and looked out with him.

  XVII

  People were crying out, and rushing to their tents en masse as the rumbling grew louder. Looking away towards the front of the colony I could see four strong men pushing the great door closed and fastening it.

  “Get inside!” I heard a voice cry, and turning, I saw Crash running up, wind whipping his dark hair around his forehead. There had not been a breath of wind the entire time we’d been here, and now I saw little swirls of sandy mini-tornadoes being picked up here and there, and the whole place was shaking.

  Pushing us inside, Crash charged in after us, and secured the tent flap. The sound was now so loud we couldn’t hear each other even if we shouted, and the walls of the tent billowed and whipped in the powerful wind. It was growing dark, as if a thick cloud were covering the sun.

  “What is it?” I tried to yell, but even I could not hear my voice. I saw Crash’s lips move to form the words “sandstorm,” and I finally understood why they’d built the wall, and why they needed a door when there were no animals or enemies to threaten them.

  We just sat in the middle of the tent, listening, as the storm raged. I crept close to the Doctor, and he took my hand reassuringly as we sat in silence. It was several minutes before I remembered with a shudder that August and Ralston were still stuck out there. I shivered as I thought horrible thoughts about the Apogee being whirled around in the winds; the two men struggling to stabilize themselves in the rough motion.

  The Doctor must have felt me shiver, for he put an arm around me and pulled me close.

  It didn’t last that long by my wristcom, but it seemed like hours. When the winds died down, we sat still for a moment, as if worried that it would descend upon us again.

  The Captain was the first to get up and go to look out of the tent. “Things look okay out there,” he informed. “A little disheveled, maybe, but all of the structures are still standing.”

  As he finished speaking, we could hear movement as people emerged from their tents and started cleaning up the few places where the wind had wrought its havoc. Crawling to the opening and looking out, I saw that the men were already going back to their work, and in seconds the place had gone back to normal. If we had slept through the ordeal it was unlikely that we would have known that anything had happened.

  “Ara pantes sooi este kai hygieis?” we heard a familiar voice call, and Elasson’s concerned face appeared in the entrance to the tent.

  I whipped out the dictionary and typed out, “We are alright. Is everything fine out there?”

  He listened as the device translated it, and then gave an answer, which was translated, “Yes. These winds come about once every ten or twelve days. That’s why our ancestors built the walls.”

  I wanted to hear more about the ancestors he spoke of, but Crash walked up and took the book, looking curiously from it to Elasson. “How did you—what is this?”

  I had forgotten that he had been gone during our previous conversations. Taking it back, I typed out, “Thank you for checking on us. We will see you later.”

  Nodding, Elasson disappeared, and while the flap was open I saw that the sun was no longer visible above the wall, which meant night was falling.

  “How did you manage this?” Crash wanted to know, but at the moment my thoughts wouldn’t leave August and Ralston.

  “Captain,” I asked, “shouldn’t we check on—”

  He was already getting out his communicator. “Howitz, Ralston; Trent here. Is everything fine on your end?”

  There was an agonizing second of silence, and then August’s voice was heard. “We got blown a little closer to where you are, but we’re alright. Nothing seems broken, and we’re not hurt.”

  “Mr. Whales has some theories about the reactor; we’ll
get back to you in a minute. Trent out.”

  The sandstorm had completely driven the whole neutrino discovery from my mind. The Captain pocketed his communicator and turned to Whales. “Can you tell us more about the neutrinos, Mr. Whales?”

  The scientist held up his counter again and examined it, as if to reaffirm that his discovery was correct. “This sun,” he began, picking up just where he’d left off before, “lets off at least three times the neutrinos that our sun does. The higher number increases the chances of a neutrino interacting with an atom it passes through.”

  “Usually,” I explained to the Doctor, who was looking very lost, “they don’t affect the matter they pass through because they’re too small and too fast.”

  He waved his hand as if to say not to worry about him.

  “And they could have increased the fission in the reactor enough to raise the radiation level and burn a hole in the plates?” asked the Captain.

  Whales nodded. “I believe so. And this could possibly have to do with our eyes.” He looked at the Doctor and raised his eyebrows.

  The Doctor licked his lips thoughtfully. “Possibly. If I understand you at all—I suppose these whatever-they-ares could irritate the vitreous humor, causing pressure to the main body of the eye. It’s possible.”

  “And is there a way to keep it from affecting the fission?” the Captain asked, furrowing his brows. “What if we kept the fission levels as low as possible to begin with? That could enable us to get back to the ship, anyway.”

  Whales shook his head. “No sir, I don’t think so. It’s too unstable; the unpredictability of the reaction of neutrinos would prevent us from being able to tell how fast the radiation would increase. We’d have to think of some way to prevent the emissions from penetrating the reactor in the first place.”

  “But they can pass through anything,” I interjected. “Billions of them are constantly passing through Earth and coming out the other side.”

  “True. But you’ll notice, sir,” he now addressed himself to the Captain, “that the difficulties with the ship didn’t begin until after we’d entered the atmosphere. Most likely, a great number of the neutrinos are created, as on Earth, when cosmic rays collide with pions in the atmosphere. These collisions produce four different—”